5 February 2010
When the door swung open, Jean couldn't help but gasp. The man was just there, shockingly close to her, leaning forward as if his weight had been resting on the door, one of his arms propped across the frame. In that first instant very little about him registered with Jean except that he was very tall, that his hair was dark, that his face seemed kind. He remained where he was, leaning against the door, and a strange, startled sort of expression crossed that kind face as his dark eyes flickered over her.
"Jen," he said, his voice soft and quiet, reminding Jean of the way her father used to speak to the family's horses, "what's going on? Why aren't you answering your phone? Why aren't you dressed?"
He was talking to her, she realized, as if he knew her. As if when he looked at her he saw the blonde woman in the mirror, the ten-years-younger Jean in her strange clothes, in this strange house, and he knew her. He looked at her and he saw a face that he knew, in a place he expected it to be, but nothing could be further from the truth. It didn't seem as if he posed any threat, but tears gathered in the corners of Jean's eyes nonetheless; how on earth was she meant to explain herself? Would he understand? Would he believe her? And where was Lucien?
"I'm afraid there's been a terrible mistake," Jean said, and her voice was trembling. The man's brow furrowed, worry for her written all over his face. Worry for her, for his Jen; oh, if he were worried now, how would he feel when she told him the truth? That she did not know his face or how she'd come to be here and that she just wanted to go home?
"What, the shooting yesterday?" he said, and Jean's heart rate skyrocketed in alarm. "That was a good shoot, you-"
"I'm sorry," Jean cut him off quickly. She had no idea what he was talking about and she didn't want to find out; the word shooting sent a chill racing down her spine. "I'm sorry but I don't know who you are and I don't know where I am and I'm afraid there's been a mistake."
To his credit he did not laugh at her, nor did he drop his mouth open in shock. The muscles of his plain, kind face shifted infinitesimally; a tightening at his jaw, the slightest furrow of his brow, a long, slow blink as he considered what she had told him and what he might say in response. Jean did approve of a man who thought before he spoke - Lucien certainly never did.
"All right," he said, his voice still low and calm despite the strange news she'd just delivered to him. "Well. My name is Nick Buchanan, and I'm a police officer." He reached into his jacket pocket and carefully pulled out his identification, passing it over to Jean so that she could examine it. She'd seen Danny's often enough over the years to know what she was looking at; this was different, but there was his name, and his photograph, and the words proclaiming him to be Detective Nick Buchanan, a member of the Victoria State Police. Those words were emblazoned on the shirt Jean was wearing at that very moment, and it reassured her greatly. A policeman would be of great help to her now; perhaps he could phone Matthew, and set the whole thing to rights in just a few minutes.
"Thank you," Jean said, passing the ID back to him. As she did she took a moment to look at him more closely; his suit, she realized, was rather like the clothes she'd seen in the bedroom closet. Close, but not quite right. He wore a dark green shirt, an unobtrusively patterned tie, but no waistcoat, and his jacket...well, it wasn't anything like Lucien's. The trousers, too, she noticed with a seamstress's eye, were cut differently from Lucien's, and she didn't quite know what to make of it.
"Why don't I come inside, and you can tell me what's happened?" Detective Buchanan suggested carefully.
"Yes, all right," Jean said. It seemed like a good idea; she desperately needed to talk to someone, and it seemed to her that she had been given a gift. A kind man, one who had not leapt to any sort of conclusions or made any sort of accusations, one who had not told her that she was mad, one with the resources of the police at his disposal, was precisely what she needed.
"Why don't we have a cup of tea?" he said, and then he began to lead her down the corridor as if he knew precisely where he was going. Perhaps he did, Jean told herself; he'd called out Jen, and the mail on the entry table was addressed to Jennifer Mapplethorpe. Perhaps he'd been here before.
As they went he reached into his pocket and pulled out a device identical to the one Jean still held clutched tight in her hands. She watched, bemused, as he ran his fingers over the glass face of it, quickly, deftly, though from her angle she could not see what on earth he was doing. His device was not making an ungodly racket as hers had done, but then she realized that every time she'd heard the thing ring out, it had said Nick Calling on its face. Perhaps he had been responsible for the noise, and now that he was here it would fall silent. She certainly hoped so.
"Go on," he said as they stepped together into a small, brightly lit kitchen. "You have a seat and I'll see about the tea."
There was a little table, hardly big enough for the four chairs crowded around it, and Jean settled herself there, facing the kitchen, facing him. Before his arrival she'd been thinking about going in search of the kitchen, but now that she'd found it she was rather more perplexed than comforted. From her seat at the table she could see the stove, and the sink, and the refrigerator, but it was all...wrong. The surfaces were shiny and black, and there were all sorts of appliances littered across the countertops that Jean understood not one bit. There was a bowl of fresh fruit, however, and that was a comfort. Perhaps they could have breakfast as well.
As Jean watched, in silence, Detective Buchanan moved easily through the kitchen. He went straight to the kettle, filled it, set it to heat up while he opened one of the cabinets, pulled down two mugs and a small sugar bowl. As if he'd known precisely where they were, as if he'd done it a hundred times. The tea itself was in a different place, but he knew that, too, went and fetched it without fuss or hesitation.
"You seem to know your way around this place," Jean said. She was curious about it, about him, about this man who knew her face but did not know her. If he knew this Jennifer, how did he know her, and why did he seem so comfortable in her home?
"This house belongs to a friend of mine," he told her quietly, and strange, she thought, but it seemed to her that there was sorrow in his voice when he spoke.
"Jennifer Mapplethorpe," Jean offered for him when he did not continue.
"That's right," he said. "Do you know her?"
"No. I saw her name on the letters in the foyer."
Detective Buchanan was busy with the tea, his back turned towards her, but Jean did not miss the way his shoulders slumped, as if her words had wounded him.
"Who is she?"
He didn't answer her, not right away. The kettle had heated shockingly fast, and he was busy with the tea. Busy with his own thoughts, too, it seemed to Jean. After all, when he'd seen her face he'd thought she was Jennifer. He probably thought he was speaking to his own friend right now, a woman he cared for, a woman - Jean realized with a sudden sense of dread - who wore no wedding ring, and whose house he navigated as easily as if it were his own. What must he be thinking? He was treating her gently, as if he did not doubt her when she told him she did not know him, but he was a policeman, and perhaps was only hiding his own horror beneath a professional facade of calm.
With the tea made he turned back to her, a cup in each hand, and joined her at the table. He'd put sugar in her tea without asking, but Jean didn't mention it; there were far more important things to be worrying about, at present. He eased himself into the chair across from her, took a sip from his own steaming cup, and then, finally, he spoke.
"Jennifer Mapplethorpe is a Detective with the State Police," he told her. "We work together. This is her house, and that's her phone-" he gestured to the device, which Jean had laid on the table - "and I have to tell you, you look just like her."
It's a phone? Jean thought. Such a silly little thing, the distraction of the phone. It didn't look like a telephone. It didn't look like anything Jean had ever seen before. Somehow that troubled her more than the issue of her face; just where on earth was she? And this Jennifer - who'd ever heard of a lady detective? There were a few women officers with the Ballarat police, but mostly what they did was make tea and sit in when the officers had to speak to women who were on their own. None of them were detectives; there weren't any detectives at all, in Ballarat. There was no need for them. But this Jennifer, she was a detective, and Jean looked just like her.
"I know," she said. "I don't...you're going to think I'm mad, but when I went to sleep last night everything was perfectly normal and when I woke up I was here. In this place. And I...I saw myself in the mirror, but I...this isn't right."
"You're confused," he supplied helpfully.
Jean shot him a baleful look.
"I know precisely who I am and what I'm meant to look like and where I'm meant to be, but I don't know how I got here or who Jennifer Mapplethorpe is and I don't know why on earth my hair is blonde."
The corner of his mouth ticked up, as if had the circumstances been even slightly less grim he might have smiled.
"All right," he said. "Who are you, then?"
Jean straightened herself primly in her chair, but only then did she recall her current state of undress, and she felt a blush begin to paint her cheeks. What had she been thinking? She wasn't wearing any sort of undergarments save for those very brief black knickers, and her legs were completely bare under those shorts, and that dreadful shirt was so loose. Just how much of her could he see? A sudden urge to flee welled up within her, but she forced it back down. Though he'd asked her why she wasn't dressed he seemed otherwise unfazed by her outfit; perhaps he was accustomed to seeing Jennifer like this. That was a strange thought.
"Mrs. Jean Beazley," she said in as strong a voice as she could muster. "Of Ballarat."
That seemed to surprise him. Perhaps, she realized suddenly, he didn't believe her at all. Perhaps he thought she was Jennifer, and that she'd only lost her memory, and so had been surprised to find that she was possessed of a perfectly clear memory, albeit a very wrong one. What would you do, she asked herself, if you saw Lucien, only he told you he was someone else? It was an impossible question - who'd ever heard of any such thing? Jean wasn't sure what she'd do in his shoes, but she did think that Detective Buchanan was doing an admirable job under the circumstances.
"Well then, Mrs. Beazley," he said, and a reflexive smile tugged at Jean's lips, for he had listened to her well, and was treating her with dignity and courtesy despite the strange situation they'd found themselves in. "Tell me, what's the last thing you remember before you woke up here?"
"Right," Jean said, and tried to order her thoughts. "The last thing, I, well, I remember going to bed. At home."
"In Ballarat?"
"Yes. Would you like the address, Detective Buchanan?"
"I would, actually," he said, and reached once more into his jacket pocket, pulling out a pen and a small notebook. Jean gave him the address of the house on Mycroft Avenue, and he dutifully copied it down.
"That's the home of Doctor Lucien Blake," Jean told him. "He's my employer, I'm his housekeeper," she added quickly, not wanting the Detective to get the wrong idea about her and her living situation.
"How long have you been working for Doctor Blake?" he asked without looking up from his notebook.
"Well, I've been working for Lucien for a year and a half or so, now. Before that I worked for his father Thomas. I've been employed with the Blakes since the end of the war."
He stopped writing then and looked up at her sharply, a curious expression on his face.
"Which war would that be?" he asked.
What on earth? Jean wondered. No one had ever asked her that before; no one ever needed to. As far as Jean was concerned - as far as everyone was concerned - the war could only refer to one conflict.
"The war," she said, with heavy emphasis. "The second World War."
"All right," he said slowly, and put down his pen. "So you came to work for Thomas Blake in 1945?"
"It was early 1946," Jean answered.
"Right."
For a moment he was silent, and then he gave a great sigh, and ran his hand wearily over his face. That broad hand of his hid his eyes from her, and Jean could do no more than sip her tea, and wonder what he was thinking. Why had that particular detail troubled him so much? She wondered. There had been plenty of war widows looking for work in those days, and Ballarat was full of stories like hers. Surely, she thought, this had been the least surprising piece of news she'd given him so far. Hadn't it?
"Mrs. Beazley, Jennifer and I have a friend named Claudia who is a psychiatrist. Would it be all right with you if I rang her, and brought her here to speak with you? I think she might be...better suited to help you than me."
A woman psychiatrist? There wasn't a single psychiatrist in the whole of Ballarat, and Jean had certainly never heard of a woman in that profession. But if Detective Buchanan meant to call her, that meant -
"I'm not mad," she said, somewhat desperately. It was precisely what a madwoman would say, though, and she knew it. "My nephew is a constable in Ballarat, could you just ring him for me, please? His name is Danny Parks."
Detective Buchanan wrote that down, too, quickly.
"All right, Mrs. Beazley, how about this. I'll ring the police in Ballarat, and see if I can find Danny. And if I can't, will you speak to Claudia?"
Jean was certain that this whole misunderstanding would become clearer once she was able to make contact with her own friends, her own family in Ballarat, and so she agreed at once. Detective Buchanan would reach Danny, and she would hear a familiar voice, and then everything would be all right. Wouldn't it?
"I will," she agreed.